Christopher Backus

Police Officer

Christopher Backus is a Washington State police officer whose career has moved through corrections, reserve patrol, county jail work, and municipal policing. That range shapes how he approaches the job now: training as an ongoing habit, not a checkbox, and community contact, especially with young people, as real work rather than an afterthought.

The path here

Backus grew up in Olympia, Washington, and came into law enforcement from a few different directions before landing where he is now. He started as a guard with the Washington Department of Corrections, worked as a reserve police officer in Shelton, and served as a jailer at Mason County Jail. From there he moved into patrol, holding police officer positions with the Tukwila Police Department, the Tenino Police Department, and now the Grand Coulee Police Department.

That path across corrections, county jail, and several municipal departments gives him a wider view of the system than a single-agency career usually does. He talks about it in terms of perspective: what a call looks like from inside a jail is different from what it looks like on patrol, and both are different again from the reserve side. He carries all three into how he trains and how he shows up on a shift.

He studied criminal justice with a minor in psychology at Saint Martin's University, after an associate degree at South Puget Sound Community College and an honor roll diploma from Capital High School. He treats training as something that does not end at the academy. He is also a steady advocate for getting out into the community, particularly with juveniles, on the theory that the relationships built before trouble starts matter as much as the response after.

Outside the job, Backus stays close to the sports he grew up on, playing softball, along with hiking, camping, working out, fly fishing in Montana, and time with family in the Olympia area he still calls home.